Upon taking office, Provost Chaouki Abdallah assembled the Provost’s Diversity Council; bringing together varying levels of expertise in diversity matters, a broad cross-section of occupations/disciplined from across UNM’s academic community. Council members reflect the remarkable diversity of backgrounds and ideas at the University of New Mexico, and came together to improve the University’s performance where diversity, equity and inclusion are concerned.

The twenty-two-member Diversity Council began their work on November 22, 2011. The Council consisted of faculty, staff and students with varying degrees of knowledge about diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice in higher education. The committee was charged as follows:

The charge of the Diversity Council is to review historical documents addressing diversity at UNM and study campus climate policies and best practices addressing diversity and excellence at institutions of higher education. Data from various sources will be evaluated in determining the needs at UNM as we move to establish a UNM model that embraces diversity and excellence. The work of the Diversity Council will culminate with a re-envisioned actionable Diversity Plan that will lead our institution for the next ten years. The committee will seek ways in which this plan may be successfully woven into the very fabric of daily operations at the University of Mexico.

The Strategic Plan is designed as a living document that will be revisited and improved on a regular basis. The committee is now seeking your ideas, feedback, and suggestions for how this would look in your context. How does this connect with your discipline, department, program, or unit?

The Diversity Council will regularly meet with Provost Abdallah and President Bob Frank with updates and feedback drawn from their gatherings along with work of previous committees and input from constituents and stakeholders.

The New Mexico Statewide Race, Gender, Class Data Policy Consortium strives to be a research design and methodology incubator-a convergence space-that fosters dialogues that advance the exchange of ideas and innovative value-added strategies for improving data collection, analysis and reporting that advances policy-relevant knowledge about inequities across a variety of policy arenas including education, health, employment, housing, criminal justice and early childhood. A guiding premise of the Consortium is that examining the intersection and co-construction of race, gender, and class, as well as other axes of inequities provides a valuable framework for mapping and ameliorating social inequalities in high priority policy arenas. The Consortium aspires to be a national leader in establishing communities of practice that work in concert toward the creation of pathways—from harmonized and contextualized data collection, analysis and reporting—to effective policy solutions and interventions that address the pressing needs of the diverse communities in New Mexico. Convened by the Institute for the Study of “Race” & Social Justice, which was established January 2009, the Consortium was established in July 2014.